Mayor-elect Liz McMillan’s leadership skills have developed through a wide range of jobs, including tour guiding in the Rockies and selling party-plan lingerie. Susan Sandys reports.
Liz McMillan had a varied career, before dedicating herself to local body politics.
The 54-year-old single mother worked selling party-plan lingerie and in playcentre childcare as she brought up her two children, now aged 18 and 20.
She grew up on a sheep farm in North Canterbury and attended Hawarden Area School for her secondary education.
‘‘Being a mayor was never a goal back then,’’ she said.
In her final year she went to Japan on an AFS exchange, attending school there for one year.
She returned to undertake a two-year Japanese language course at Christchurch Polytechnic.
Being able to speak the language helped her in the next stage of her career, where she was a tour guide in Christchurch and Queenstown. That led to her working in Methven for Mt Cook Line, which owned Mt Hutt and also tour company Ski Express.
McMillan managed Ski Express in the late 1990s, doing four winters there while working as a hiking guide at Mount Cook National Park in the summers.
She then travelled to Canada and lived there for three years, working as a skiing and hiking guide in the Rockies.
Local body politics, let alone one-day becoming a mayor, was still far from her thoughts.
However, once she settled in Methven and had children, her upbringing, which had been as part of a community-minded family, started to have an influence.
‘‘Mum and dad were both involved in lots of community groups. Once I settled in Methven and had the kids, it was normal to be part of playcentre, toy library,’’ she said.
And then she decided to try out for the Methven Community Board after talking to someone else interested in becoming member.
Her first term on he board was 2007.
She became a single parent when her children were aged 2 and 4, but that didn’t stop her new passion for local body politics.
In her second term on the community board, this time as chair, she started selling party plan lingerie for Intimo.
It was a job she did for about 10 years. Having involved travel around the South Island and delivering sales pitches in various people’s homes, the job was ‘‘good practice’’.
‘‘Again that is something I never thought I would do,’’ she said.
‘‘But it was a good way to meet people, and I would have to stand up and do presentations.’’
She also studied childcare through playcentre, and worked as a supervisor, before focusing on the next stage of her career in local body politics.
After three terms on the community board, two as chair, she decided to make a run for the district council.
She was the highest polling candidate in the Western Ward, under the first female mayor of the district, Donna Favel, in 2016.
In her second term on the district council, again as the highest polling Western Ward candidate, first-term mayor Neil Brown appointed her as deputy mayor.
This year as her second term of deputy mayor drew to a close, she started to think about what her options might be if Brown chose not to restand.
‘‘I was never going to stand against him, I felt like he was doing a really good job, and I felt like we were a really good team,’’ she said.
Now having attained the pinnacle of local body politics as new mayor elect for the Ashburton District, McMillan said she was ‘‘a wee bit overwhelmed’’, as well as ‘‘excited’’, ‘‘just ready’’ to lead, and ‘‘very humbled by all the support’’.
